A Modern Pythagorean

by Dana Lloyd Thomas

No study of esoteric culture in Italy in this
century can fail to mention Arturo Reghini (18781946).Writer,
translator, mathematician, and above all a Pythagorean, he played a
key role in the revival of scholarship on esotericism in Italy as
well as in the attempt to restore the spiritual traditions of
Masonry.

Reghini's books and articles cover a variety
of subjects including Masonic symbolism,Theosophy, Neoplatonism,
Cornelius Agrippa, and Cagliostro. As editor of the magazines Ignis
and Atanor, he published articles by the noted esotericists Rene
Guenon and Julius Evola. Later he was to pay for his
out-spokenness—especially on behalf of freedom of conscience -when
Freemasonry was outlawed by the Fascist regime.

Born in Florence on November 12, 1878,
Reghini was the eldest of five children. His career as a
philosopher, in the classical sense of "lover of wisdom," began
early in life, when his aris-tocratic family sent him to the
University of Pisa to study mathematics.The tall, thin young student
was approached one evening by a stranger who singled him out as a
candidate for initiation into the mysterious Pythagorean school,
also known as the Schola Italica.The stranger turned out to be
Amedeo Armentano (1886-1966), who fascinated literary circles in
Florence with his abstruse, laconic reasoning about time, mind, and
soul as well as with his psychic powers.

Reghini was initiated in the highest sense of
the word. He experienced the trial of the five elements not only as
a ceremony but as a profound reality. For him, passing beyond the
threshold of death was a matter of experience, vision, and knowledge
rather than a mere symbol. 1

Polltics and Secret Societiea

To understand Reghini's role in the esoteric
culture of his time, it is helpful to have some background on
Italian Freemasonry and its connection to historical events. As in
other countries, the Craft in Italy has so many facets that there is
little point in overgeneralizing. For some, Masonry has commanded a
virtually religious allegiance in the observance of the "ancient and
accepted" rules and ceremonies, while others undoubtedly saw it as a
means of improving society at large based on nineteenth-century
rationalist beliefs in progress, education, and science. The ranks
of Masonry have also included an eminent minority of philosophers
and mystics, as well as-the usual op-portunists. Finally there are
the antiMasonic elements, initially Catholic and later spreading to
both leftand right-wing politicians and thinkers. In any case, the
political and esoteric aspects of Freemasonry have often run
parallel throughout Italian history.

The first known Italian lodge was founded in
Florence by Charles Sackville, Earl of Middlesex, Henry Fox, and Sir
Charles Mann in about 1730. 2 Although by this time Florentine
Renaissance traditions were but a distant memory,Tuscany under the
later Medici had still managed to preserve some independence,
sparing it from the worst excesses of the Counter-Reformation.
Lodges were soon opened in Rome, Naples, Turin, and elsewhere. But
the Craft's connection with England—a major Protestant power—aroused
the suspicions of both the rulers of the Italian states and the
ecclesiastical hierarchy.

In 1738, when Pope Clement XII issued the
bull In eminenti, which in practice banned Catholics from becoming
Freemasons, he had reached the venerable age of 87 and was
completely blind.

Firmly continuing the papacy's penchant for
power politics, the measure seems to have been initially rooted in
concern about the situation in the pope's native Tuscany and was
probably

formulated mainly with Italy in mind. It may
have been no coincidence that the last of the Medici, Gian Gastone,
had died a year before; the move could have had the aim both of
strihng a blow against a suspiciously Protestant
organization and of reasserting papal influence in relatively
tolerantTuscany. Nevertheless this independence persisted when
Francis of Lorraine, himself a Freemason, became Tuscany's new
ruler. 3 The papal stance marked the start of persecution; the poet
Tommaso Crudeli, the first known Masonic martyr, was tortured to

make him reveal "the secrets of the
Freemasons," but he was released upon Francis's intervention. 4
Several decades later, the celebrated magus Count Alessandro
Cagliostro was not to be so lucky, and would die in 1795 while
imprisoned in the papal fortress of San Leo. Of the papal ban
Reghini wrote, "The effect of the Church's hostility was to cause a
reaction in some countries, with Freemasonry being forced to defend
itself by becoming a secret society. Nevertheless, it never became
sectarian, and the rituals were alwavs characterized bv the
tolerance, nonsectar1anlsm, ana independence of the early period." 5

Masons and Masonic organizations played a
significant role in the Italian Risorgimento ("Resurrection") of the
nineteenth century. Freemasons actively promoted the unification of
Italy's many states, thus winning them further condemnation
for"subversion." Giuseppe Mazzini's political organization, Giovine
Italia ("Young Italy"), dedicated to unification, shared Masonic
ideals of humanity, progress, and secular government.

The Italian Grand Orient was founded in
1859.6 In 1862, a Sovereign Council of the Scottish Rite convened in
Palermo under the guidance of the patriot Giuseppe Garibaldi, and in
1864 the first Congress of Italian Freemasonry met in Florence and
elected Garibaldi as Grand Master.

Perhaps even more than the French Revolution,
the Risorgimento was a "bourgeois" revolution, and Freemasonry
attracted Italy's small but active middle class. It was seen as a
means of keeping together forces as diverse as Mazzini's
republicans, monarchists who supported the House of Savoy, and
Garibaldi's "Redshirts."As one scholar points out, "in a country
where all the forms of political conflicts had a regional basis, . .
. the lodges were the only real school of national unity." 7 As a
result of the Church's continuing opposition to unification, Masonry
persisted in its anticlerical stance.

In the decades following the country's
unification in 1870, numerous members of the new class of
politicians and administrators were Freemasons. By the end of the
nineteenth century, Freemasonry was widely perceived as part of the
establishment and as affording advantages that were often more
material than spiritual. Financial scandals and political
instability had made establishment politicians vulnerable to attack,
and Freemasonry, previously seen as the champion of independence and
democracy, was now accused of being class-ridden and corrupt. As in
other Latin countries, many anti-Masonic pamphlets were circulated,
generally based on conspiracy charges by the Abbe Barruel and Leo
Taxil and creating the impression that the institution was much more
powerful and monolithic than it actually was.

These ideas undoubtedly influenced Benito
Mussolini in his early years in the Socialist Party and were to
resurface in the Fascist period (1922-43) despite the Masonic
connections of many Fascist leaders. 8 The FAcist movement, founded
in 1919, counted a number of Freemasons among its first members, who
were attracted by a variety of factors, including the movement's
early anticlerical and revolutionary leanings. Persecution, though
not always systematic continued until the fall of the regime.

Paradoxically, as soon as World War II ended,
anti-Masonic literature was revived, this time with accusations of
collaboration with Fascism. In recent decades, historical research
on Italian Freemasonry has largely been monopolized by Catholic and
Communist-oriented writers who are for different reasons hostile to
the institution. 9 It is therefore no wonder that a Masonic writer
has observed that "Italian Masonry is probably the most
misrepresented and misunderstood in the world." 10

Esoteric Societies

Italian Freemasonry was not all politics,
however, and has always had a strong esoteric strain. Together with
the specifically Masonic symbolism of building and architecture,
probably rooted in medieval guilds, various esoteric traditions
including Rosicrucian, Kabbalistic, Templar, and Pythagorean lines

From the earliest times Freemasonry has
considered geometric symbolism to be of the highest importance, with
the Pythagorean theorem being widely depicted in Masonic art. It has
been suggested that some form of Pythagorean initiation survived
through the centuries, first in the Byzantine Empire and later, as
the Ottoman Turks advanced, in Italy, where the Greek intellectual
elite took refuge.

During the reign of Elizabeth I, Sir Thomas
Bodley is said to have been initiated in the northern Italian city
of Forli into the Pythagorean Brotherhood of the Fratelli Obscuri,
having

"the laudable object of propagating the
Sciences and love of Virtue" and "established in imitation of an
older Society which had existed since before the fall of the Grecian
Empire in the towns of Constantinople and Thessalonica." In the
eighteenth century, the British and French Pythagoreans came to be
known as "Snuff-Takers" when they adopted the tobacco plant as their
symbol. 11

Naples was the home of Egyptian Freemasonry,
a tradition claiming descent from the Hermetic community dating back
to Hellenistic Egypt: there is still a "Nile Square" in the city,
and Giordano Bruno, who exalted the "wisdom of Egypt," was from
nearby Nola. The school subsequently came to light through the work
of Cagliostro and later of Giuliano Kremmerz, founder of the
Hermetic Brotherhood of Myriam. 12 Cagliostro's "Gospel," first
published in Italian in 1914 and later commented on by Reghini, uses
alchemical terminology to describe a path to immortality as well as
propounding the use of magical seals, meditation, fasting, and a
vegetarian diet.

The esoteric Order of Misraim (whose name is
derived from the Hebrew name for Egypt) seems to have had Italian
origins. The Misraim first emerged in Italy in the eighteenth
century, when it was associated with Cagliostro who brought it to
Venice around 1788. 13 Because both Egyptian Freemasonry and the
Order of Misraim allow the admission of women—thus violating the
basic Masonic guidelines known as the "Landmarks"—and because they
work degrees beyond the third, they are generally classified as part
of "fringe Masonry."

The Order of Misraim was introduced into France
after 1813 by the Bedarride brothers; afterwards it spread to
Belgium, Switzerland, Britain, and the U.S. It consists of two forms
of practice: the Kabbalistic form adopted by the Bedarrides and the
Egyptian-Hellenistic form of the highest degrees known as the Arcana
Arcanorum. 14

Politics again crossed paths with the
esoteric when Garibaldi was appointed Grand Hierophant of the
Misraim in 1880. At that time the order was joined with the Order of
Memphis, whose rituals are inspired by Egyptian imagery. By the end
of the century, the combined order was to provide a link between
Freemasonry and Theosophy in Italy: both H.P. Blavatsky and Annie
Besant held high degrees.

Theosophlst and Freemason

When he was only eighteen, Reghini went to
Rome, where he was introduced to Isabel Cooper-Oakley, Blavatsky's
delegate to Italy, and in 1898 the two were among the founders of
the Italian branch of the Theosophical Society. (Blavatsky had
always had a weakness for Italy; she even claimed to have fought
with Garibaldi against French and papal forces at the Battle of
Mentana in 1867.)l5 Theosophy too was soon open to accusations of
heresy, if not outright paganism, thus attracting the hostility of
the Church. Yet the Theosophical Society proved to be an im-portant
vehicle for broadening the horizons of educated and open-minded
Italians by introducing the study of oriental philosophy and
religion—until then largely limited to academic circles—to a wider
public.

While already receiving instruction on the
Pythagorean tradition, Reghini started his Masonic career with
initiation into the Order of Memphis and Misraim in 1902. What did
he find in this esoteric form of Freemasonry? He was probably told
something like these comments by a modern Masonic writer:

The Rite of Memphis and Misraim is not suited
to every Mason, but is intended for those few Brothers who,
following the many indications and revelations to be found in
their rituals, genuinely aspire to enter into resonance with
the higher planes of existence, and to overcome their
individuality. In this case the Rite is a visible, tangible link between
the lower sphere and the upper sphere. It provides the key to the
Arcana, the way in which they can be revealed and practiced. 16 The order's Osirian ritual contains
suggestive references Egypt, as when the aspiring Master is told: Brother, you have entered this Temple which is
the Middle Chamber of the Pyramid, aspiring to become Osiris, and
to achieve this privilege you have recited the negative
confession, well aware that it was only symbolic, the confession that
every deceased person recites when reaching the world of
shadows and coming before the tribunal of Osiris to identify
himself with Osiris if his life has been pure. 17

In 1903 Reghini joined a lodge in Florence
that owed allegiance to the Italian Grand Orient; two years later
this was reorganized as the Lucifero Lodge, with Reghini as one of
the founders. At the same time lodges in Milan merged with the Rome
Grand Orient, with headquarters in Rome's Palazzo Giustiniani.

Writing in 1906, Reghini censured opposition
to the higher degrees (from the fourth up to the 95th in
orders like the Misraim) and expressed regret over the failure of
Mazzini and the American Albert Pike to create "a secret rite above
all others, a sort of Masonry within Masonry, which would have
unified the divided Masonic family." 18 In 1908 a number of
dissidents, led by a Protestant minister, broke away from the Grand
Orient in protest against its overly materialishc and radical
political stance.They set up a new Masonic organization with its
headquarters at Piazza del Gesu in Rome. Subsequently Italy's two
branches of Masonry were to be known as "Palazzo Giustiniani" and
"Piazza del Gesu" after the location of their Rome headquarters.

An attempt to promote unification of the
splintered Masonic groups by returning to the Craft's eady spiritual
roots was undertaken with the Italian Philosophic Rite, of which
Reghini was one of the founders. (The name calls to mind the
Scottish Philosophic Rite, thought to have some connection with
British Pythagoreans.) The Italian rite had seven degrees and has
been described as a mixture of Pythagorean and Gnostic elements. In
1911 Reghini and Armentano rewrote the rite's statutes, dictating
that a copy of the Golden Verses of Pythagoras was to be placed in
the temple together with the other objects used in lodge work.

This experience was interrupted by WorldWar
I, which disrupted international fraternal contacts; Reghini himself
served in the army. The Philosophic Rite came to an end in 1919,
when it was merged with the Grand Lodge Scottish Rite. Afterwards
Reghini, while remaining a Freemason, would be more cautious about
any "universal reformation" of the Craft.

Occultlsm and the Esoteric

In Italy, as in the rest of Europe around the
turn of the century, popular interest in the occult was largely
focused on phenomena like hypnotism and spiritualism. Astrological
and magical manuals copied from classics such as those by Cornelius
Agrippa and Giovanni Battista della Porta abounded. At the same time
the works of French writers like Eliphas Levi, Henri Durville, and
Papus were gaining a considerable readership, and there were a
number of esoteric journals. Reghini himself translated Swami
Vivekananda, the Egyptologist E.A. Wallis Budge, and Robert Louis
Stevenson's occult tales.

Both Reghini and Giuliano Kremmerz, active in
Naples during the same period, stressed that theirs was a quest for
knowledge and warned against the confusion between spiritual
achievement and bouts of emotional excitement. In this respect
they rejected the occultism of seances and sects, sharing the
position of Levi, who insisted that his occultism (a term he coined)
was based on faith, science, and reason. 19

This experimental method makes use not only of
logic but of analogy. Early in his career Reghini had written, "The
symbolism of architecture, ceremonies, and images is superior to
ordinary language due to the multitude of meanings which
only symbolism can express, since it works through analogy; the
hieroglyphic and ideogram forms of writing are superior to ordinary
writing due to the breadth and precision of their meaning."20 Twenty
years later, Reghini expressed much the same idea: "There exists an
oral tradition of hidden knowledge which cannot be transmitted with
words (perceived and interpreted in the profane sense). There is
still a serious tradition in theWest which has nothing to do with
the circuslike uproar, the parody and pretense, of today's so-called
occultism."21 Reghini also sometimes retired with his friends
Armentano and Giulio Parise to an isolated tower on the coast of
Calabria, ideal for study and meditation. Reghini was also no
stranger to ceremonial magic, though one of the few direct
references he makes to it has humorous overtones, mentioning some of
the practical difficulties of pre-dawn rituals, with alarm clocks,
cups of hot coffee, sputtering oil lamps, incense failing to burn,
and candles going out, all to the detriment of the necessary
"spiritual concentration."22

Throughout all this activity Reghini remained
a Pythagorean.What did this mean for him in practical terms? He
engaged in the daily recollection of his deeds—a practice that has
been traced back to Pythagoras—as well as "philosophical ecstasy,"
which was actually a type of meditation. The practitioner was to sit
comfortably in a quiet place, emptying himself of all thoughts and
emotions; he could either be in the dark or have a light behind him.
"Then, when the soul is purified, a bright and shining light from
which nothing can be hidden seems to appear," says one old text."And
then a sweet pleasure is felt, incompa-rable to anything in this
world, and . . . an extremely plea-surable itch is felt inside the
head.... The persons most suited to this ecstasy are those whose
skull is open, through which the spirits can escape ....I believe
that this is the Platonic ecstasy, the one mentioned by Porphyry as
having overcome Plotinus seven times."

This practice has important implications as a
form of "Western yoga." It does not so much connote an evaluation of
deeds as good or bad but rather stresses the importance of
remembering itself. The Renaissance mages Tommasso
Campanella and Giordano Bruno were probably familiar with this
meditation. 23 Reghini also stressed that the seeker aimed at the
trans-formation of his soul by such techniques as breath control,
meditation, and recollection, and that this transformation had to
take place during one's lifetime.

The Pagan Utopia

In Reghini's time the word "pagan" still had
largely negative connotations, and was widely used not to indicate a
historically documented religion but rather as a synonym for
immorality and materialism. Nevertheless he found it to be the
best term to sum up his own position. In a 1914 article entitled
"Imperialismo pagano," he called for the spiritual rebirth of
Italian culture in a new type of"empire" that would entail
excellence in every field of human endeavor.This achievement would
require freedom and tolerance, although history showed that, unlike
Greco-Roman paganism, the Abrahamic religions had all too often
borne the bitter fruit of religious intolerance. Reghini agreed with
Gibbon that the fanatical attitude of the Christians from the
earliest times had led to the fall of Rome and later to the papal
policy of preventing Italy's unification. 24

The avant-garde milieu in which
Reghini's ideas had matured was also focused on the problem of
creating a new "secular re-ligion," free from the defects of
Catholicism yet based on spiritual values. 25 Nevertheless for
Reghini any anti-Christian"crusade" would have been a contradiction
in terms; rather he called for the classical distinction between
popular and initiatic religion, subsequently developed by Guenon and
others. He likewise condemned the materialism and rabid
anticlericalism of some in the Masonic community, and may have even
cherished a dream of the day when the Catholic Church would have
adopted the policy of St. Francis of Assisi, abandoning political
and financial power to devote itself to good works.

While aiming at spiritual perfection, Reghini
believed, Masonry should be nonsectarian. In his 1922 work on the
meaning of the three basic Masonic degrees, he analyzes the
symbolism of the initiation of a Master Mason, with the ritual death
and resurrection of Hiram calling to mind Osiris, Dionysus, and
Jesus; the initiate, he says, should become aware that the conscious
mind does not depend on physical existence alone. He likewise chides
some of his Anglo-American brothers for interpreting the Nineteenth
Landmark, requiring belief in God, as meaning that Masons must
necessarily be Christians, reminding them that the square and
compass are placed on top of the Bible. 26 He also comments
that both continental and Anglo-American Masonry are more obsessed
with high-sounding titles than with the spiritual perfection of the
initiate.

THE DISSAPOINTMENT OF FASCISM

After moving to Rome in 1921, Reghini devoted
considerable attention to Fascism and to the relationship developing
between Mussolini and the Vatican.

Most of Italian Freemasonry, along with the
Nationalist and Socialist dissidents led by Mussolini, had backed
intervention in World War I, above all to wrest the cities of Trent
and Trieste from Italy's old enemy Austria. After the war, in 1920,
the Grand Orient supported the occupation of the city of Fiume on
the Adriatic in defiance of Italy's allies France and Britain; this
event was considered to be the final step in national unification.

When Mussolini's Fascist government came to
power in 1922, there was little hint of the disaster that was to
befall Freemasonry. None of the betterknown Fascists were
practicing Catholics, and ndeed some were known to be Freemasons.
Unfortunately, however, Reghini's warnings that the Craft required
spiritual renewal had gone unheeded, as would his attempts to
prevent the regime from coming to an agreement with the Church. In
addition, the Masonic hierarchy did not prove to be as skillful as
their predecessors in avoiding a "divide and conquer" policy.

Since the French Revolution, the fasces, the
ancient insignia of Roman power consisting of twelve birch rods
bound together with an ax had had revolutionary, antimonarchist
connotations, initially inspiring its adoption by the Fascist Party.
For men like Reghini, however, the symbol also evoked the ancient
Roman concept of res publica, in which power was invested both in
the people and in an aristocratic Senate. Reghini did not want to
propose some new system of government; rather he hoped that a
spiritually oriented and Pythagorean Masonry would foster an elite
political class whose members would be endowed with superior values.

Nineteen twenty-four was a crucial year for
Reghini. In that year the government decreed Masonic affiliation to
be incompatible with Fascist Party membership. A Jesuit journal
published an article condemning Freemasonry on the grounds
that, being international, it was therefore "unItalian";
this line was soon officially adopted by the Fascists. 27

Reghini, a member of the Supreme Council of
the Piazza del Gesu Grand Lodge, replied that Masonry's key role in
promoting the Risorgimento disproved this accusation beyond any
doubt. By this time, however, historical arguments were of no avail,
making him almost inadvertently a political dissident. In May, his
friend Armentano, who had continued to work with him in an abortive
attempt to reunify the two main branches of Italian Masonry, left
for Brazil.

Any hopes that Freemasons may have nourished
for a change of heart in the regime were dashed by the antiMasonic
violence unleashed in November 1925. A new law against "secret
societies" did not specifically mention Freemasons, but the regime
made it clear that they were the intended target. 28 Mussolini
asserted that the measures were to prevent political plots and not
to suppress Freemasonry as a spiritual institution, but there was
little difference when it came to police suppression. A number of
top Grand Orient officials went into exile in France, while after an
unsuccessful attempt to reorganize as the "Order of St. John
of Scotland," the Piazza del Gesu was also forced to close.
Ironically, the lack of systematic persecution against ordinary
Freemasons led Pope Pius XI to criticize the Fascist regime for
being "too soft." In an article published in Fascism and the Vatican
in 1927-28, Reghini, foreseeing the imminent alliance between
Freemasonry and the Vatican, commented:

The current conditions of our country in
relation to the political situation in Europe and the world
would be favorable to someone who was willing and able to exploit
them to create a new universal civilization starting from Rome.
However . . . this type of imperialism could not be subservient to
a force which is universal in name only, whose innate and
incurable intolerance is unacceptable to both the rest of Western
civilization and to the Oriental civilizations.... We would proudly say
more, if we were not obliged today to use more prudent language
than Agrippa was able to use four centuries ago. Z9

By this time there could be no doubt that
Reghini's position was highly unorthodox. In a short time he had
graduated from being a gifted writer on rather obscure subjects to
being an unflinching public opponent of Mussolini's rapprochement
with the Vatican, culminating in the 1929 Lateran Treaty. How could
a self-declared pagan be allowed to publish freely after an alliance
between the Church and Fascism? Reghini's courage in the defense of
Masonry was all the more remarkable considering his dim view of the
Craft as a whole for failing to fulfill its mission of perfecting
the individual.

Faced with such a difficult situation, much
of the Masonic hierarchy preferred to temporize, but after
unsuccessful attempts to come to terms with the government, both of
the major Masonic branches declared themselves to be dissolved and
would only reemerge in 1945. Reghini's sacrifice gained him few
friends either before or after the war.

Attacks in the press continued, and Parise
writes of attempts "to save my soul and Reghini's with pistol
shots.. surveillance was so close and overwhelming as to limit our
contacts, since we were even afraid of compromising people who
just happened to greet us" 30 Reghini was dismissed as a
mathematics teacher in a public school in November 1928 and had to
make a living by teaching privately.

In a disgraceful eplsode, Reghini's former
friend Julius Evola publicly denounced him for Masonic affiliation.
3l Curiously, Evola had just published Imperialismo pagano, a set of
articles borrowing considerably from Reghini's essay with the same
title and calling on the Fascists to avoid political and ideological
compromise with Catholicism. Decades later, Evola would ac-knowledge
that he owed his awareness of genuine initiation to Reghini and
Guenon.

Epilogue

At this stage Reghini, Guenon, and Evola went
on separate paths. In 1930 Guenon, who continued to be
ambivalent about Masonry as a true source of initiation, left Europe
to devote himself completely to Islamic studies in Cairo. Evola
would soon drop his intransigent "pagan imperialism" and condemn
Freemasonry on the grounds that it could not provide any genuine
spiritual initiation. He would go on to cultivate a view
diametrically opposite to that of Reghini's, seeing the Catholic
Church as the successor to the Roman Empire as well as developing
his own peculiar brand of racism that was to influence the Fascist
regime.

In the 1930s Reghini devoted himself to
teaching and to the study of the Pythagorean interpretation of
numbers, proportion, and harmony, seen not simply as an intellectual
game but as the key to life. His approach somewhat resembles that of
the nineteenth-century English Neoplatonist Thomas Taylor (whose
works he quotes) in correlating spiritual and material reality with
numbers and proportions. Reghini's book on the reconstruction of
Pythagorean geometry, containing notions "on which Freemasons would
do well to meditate," 32 was published in 1935 and was praised for
its scientific value by the Accademia d'ltalia, Italy's equivalent
of the Royal Society.

As World War II came to an end, Reghini
intensified his work on Pythagorean numbers. Perhaps sensing that
his time was short, he left detailed instructions concerning his
manuscripts. 33 At five o'clock on the hot afternoon of July 1,
1946, in a country villa near Bologna, he died standing in his
study, facing the westering sun.

In one of his later works on the relationship
between mathematics and the spiritual quest, Reghini stressed that
true philosophy involved the direct experience of the seeker:

Modern Western science is objective
experimental science, achieved externally by instruments which aid
the senses; its purpose is to observe, understand, taking into
account the inevitable alteration (the Heisenberg
principle) made on the observed conditions by the observer. In
Masonry, Hermeticism, Pythagoreanism, and esoteric science of all
times, the observer is also the object of the experience,
considered internally and directly without limiting the field to any
imaginary columns of Hercules; not so much a matter of theorizing as
of feeling and living. 34 And what indeed is the purpose of
philosophy—the love of wisdom—if not, as the Neoplatonist Porphyry
said, "to free our mind from limitations and chains"?35 u

Calfornia-born Dana Lloyd Thomas now lives in
Rome. He has wntten articles on Pythagoreanism, akhemy, and oriental
medicine and is writing a book on Arturo Reghini and esoteric
traditions in Italy.

NOTES

1. One of the main sources for Reghini's
biography was written by his

friend Giulio Parise and published as an
introduction to Arturo Reghi-

3. There is extensive literature on Clement
Xll's "excommunication" of Freemasonry The events of this period are
far from simple; the Catholic Jacobites were conspiring against the
Protestant Hanover dynasry in Eng-land, and the Jacobite association
with early Freemasonry also deserves attention.

6. Dnisions in "official" Freemasonry have
persisted up to recent years. Be-cause of the dispute over
"accepted" and "irregular" lodges and the dis-agreement over the
position of higher-degree or "fringe" Masonry, Englishlanguage
Masonic literature has perhaps not dealt with Italian history as
extensively as it could.

7. Mola, p. 61. Lodges were named after such
heretics as Tommasso Cam-panella and Giordano Bruno and a&er
patriots like Cavour, Mazzini, and Garibaldi.

8. Ibid. pp. 48ff.

9. Augusto Comba,"La Massoneria in Italia dal
Risorgimento alla Grande Guerra
‘unLamassonerianellastoriad'ltalia,ed.AIdoA.Mola (Rome:Atanor,
1981), pp. 82-83.Among these were the famous Communist intellectu-al
Antonio Gramsci and a number of Jesuit writers.

order was said to adopt different names for
reasons of safery, becoming the Nictotiates or Priseurs
("snuff-takers") in France and the Tobacco-logical Sociery in
England. See also J.M. Ragon, "Notice historique sur les Pednosophes
(enfants de la sagesse) et sur la Tabacologie, dernier voile de la
doctrine pythagoricienne ‘ in Monde Ma,connique, no. 12,April 1859.

Ragon traces the history of the order from
antiquiry and hypothesizes contacts in the Near East between the
"children of wisdom" and the Templars.

27.The article appeared in La Civilto
attolita,Aug. 2, 1924.After Reghini's reply, a counterreply appeared
in October in the monthly Cerarrhia, edit-ed by Mussolini; signed
with a pseudonym, it may have been written by Mussolini himself.